Guest post by Meredith Shippee, J.D. from The Blog Law Guide
Please Note: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
Whether it’s a link to a hotel, a camera, or a cooking class, if you're using affiliate links, you already know they’re one of the best ways to monetize your blog. And if you’re reading this, you probably also know you’re supposed to disclose them.
But how exactly are you supposed to do that? Where should the disclosure go? What should it say? And what counts as “clear” or “conspicuous” anyway?
These are the questions that trip up even experienced bloggers, and fair enough. The rules aren’t always intuitive, and the way affiliate tools work today has changed how we need to think about compliance.
As a lawyer who’s also a travel blogger, I’ve spent a lot of time navigating this intersection and paying close attention to how the rules apply in practice. The good news is that affiliate link compliance doesn’t have to be complicated. With a few simple habits and a solid understanding of what’s actually required, you can easily keep your content legally sound.
Think of this post as your shortcut to affiliate disclosure clarity.
What Exactly Do Disclosure Laws Require?
The short, non-legalese version: if you could potentially get some material benefit (like a commission) from a link, your readers need to know that before they click.
Disclosure laws vary slightly depending on where you are, but most consumer protection and advertising regulations around the world follow the same core principle:
Your disclosure must be clear, visible, and easy to understand at the time your audience engages with the content.
This is the case whether you’re looking at guidelines issued by the United States’ Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority, the Canadian Competition Bureau, the European Commission’s consumer protection rules, and many others.
So what does that mean in practice? Excellent question. Here’s the nitty-gritty:
What Should An Affiliate Disclosure Say?
There’s no one-size-fits-all script for most affiliate disclosures, but there are a few things your wording needs to do.
It should be clear, conversational, and easy for your audience to understand without clicking anything or reading between the lines. The goal is to let people know, in plain language, that you may earn a commission if they book, buy, or sign up through a link in your content.
Phrases like “affiliate link” or “may contain affiliate links” or abbreviations like “#aff.” are too vague on their own. Instead, your disclosure should state:
- That there are affiliate links on the page.
- If someone clicks on these links, you may receive a commission.
The good news is that you don’t need to sound like a legal disclosure robot; you can be direct and honest in a way that fits your voice.
If you want some help with how to word your disclosures (or anything else discussed in this article), I’ve teamed up with Stay22 to create The Stress-Free Legal Starter Kit for Affiliate Disclosures, which is a free, one-stop-shop for understanding all the legal stuff, and includes ready-to-use lawyer-drafted swipe copy you can use for disclosures.
One More Thing Your Disclosure Should Include
Best practice these days is also to include a link to your privacy policy right in your affiliate disclosure. You might wonder what your privacy policy has to do with affiliate disclosures, and the answer is cookies. Not the tasty kind, the digital kind.
Here’s the nutshell version:
→ Affiliate programs track commissions by placing non-essential cookies;
→ Those cookies collect personal data;
→ This means we’re no longer solely governed by consumer protection laws, privacy laws like the GDPR are also in play;
→ If your privacy policy only lives in your footer (as most do), most readers won’t see it until after they’ve clicked a link and the cookie has been set.
By including the link directly in your disclosure, you’re giving people information about how your site uses cookies before tracking starts, which is generally when most privacy laws expect them to be informed.
Where to Put Affiliate Disclosures
This is the part that trips people up the most, because where the disclosure goes is just as important as what it says.
Let me be abundantly clear here: your affiliate disclosure should be placed before any affiliate link.
Not at the bottom of the post. Not in the sidebar. Not buried in the footer in 6 point font. Your affiliate disclosure needs to appear before any affiliate link.
Correct blog post placement: before any affiliate links!
Why, you ask? Because consumer protection and advertising laws in many countries require that disclosures be clear, timely, and unavoidable. If your reader has already clicked the link before seeing your disclosure, it’s legally too late. The law sees that as misleading, because the person took action without having all the information.
For blog posts, the safest and most widely recommended approach is to include your disclosure at the top of the post, usually before or after your intro. That way, readers are always informed before they take action.
Social Media, Newsletters, and Video Count Too
Disclosure rules apply everywhere you share affiliate links, not just on blogs. If you’re sharing affiliate links in your newsletter, on socials, or in a video, the same legal standards apply. Your audience should know before they click that the link might earn you a commission. Here are some best practices:
- On Instagram or TikTok, put the disclosure in the caption, not just in your bio or hidden in the comments. It should be before the “read more” cut, so your audience sees it without having to tap anything. Hashtags like #ad or #affiliate can work under most guidelines (including the FTC), but only if they’re obvious and easy to spot, and they definitely should not be buried in a cloud of other tags at the end of your post (I see that a lot, unfortunately).
- On Threads or X, disclosures should appear in the same post as the affiliate link, ideally at the start, but in all cases before the affiliate link. Space is tight, so #ad or #affiliate is often the simplest way to comply.
- In videos or podcasts, mention it out loud at the beginning and include a disclosure in the description or show notes.
- For email newsletters, place the disclosure near the top or directly before the affiliate link. Don’t hide it in your footer. If your reader never scrolls that far, they’re technically never informed.
Social media disclosures should appear before the “more” cutoff and should not be buried in a group of hashtags.
What If You’re Blogging from Outside the U.S.?
You might be based in Spain or New Zealand, but if your readers include people in the United States (and chances are, they do), the U.S. Federal Trade Commission still expects you to follow its rules.
This is something a lot of creators miss. Disclosure obligations don’t just follow you, they follow your audience.
Even if your own country doesn’t have strong requirements, or enforcement is a bit more relaxed, you're still expected to comply if you're reaching an international readership.
But many countries do have similar rules. The US, UK, Canada, Australia, and the EU, for example, all require affiliate disclosures to be clear, timely, and easy for readers to understand. Some go further than others in terms of specifics, but the underlying principle is the same: be transparent about affiliate relationships, and disclose early.
If You're Using Automated Affiliate Tools
The introduction of AI-powered affiliate features, like Stay22's Spark, that insert links automatically is fantastic for monetization, but these AI tools also require a change to your legal compliance strategy.
If your affiliate tools are adding links on your behalf, you may not know exactly where those links are showing up. The safest move?
If you’re using an AI powered affiliate link tool, include a disclosure on every single blog post or page where the tool is enabled.
Make Disclosure a Habit by Making It Automatic
An easy way to stay compliant is to stop asking yourself whether a post needs a disclosure and just assume every post does. That doesn't mean you have to add it manually every time. In fact, the more you can automate your disclosures, the better.
- If you use WordPress, creating a reusable block or adding disclosure language to your post templates can save you time and keep you consistent. If you’re using the Kadence theme on WordPress (a favorite in the travel blogging world), setting up a hooked element is a smart, set-it-and-forget-it option.
- Include a disclosure in your email templates or social caption templates too so it’s one less thing to worry about.
- Prefer to keep it manual? Add it to your pre-publishing checklist so it becomes part of your regular process.
My set-it-and-forget-it reusable Element block in Kadence set to appear just below my TOC on all posts
The more you bake disclosure into your systems, the easier it becomes to stay compliant, without having to overthink it every time you hit publish.
Wrapping Up (and a Freebie)
With a little knowledge (which you now have) and some systems in place, affiliate disclosures don’t have to be complicated. They might not be glamorous, but they’re non-negotiable.
And, because I know you didn’t wake up today thinking, “I can’t wait to memorize deeply exciting compliance guidelines” (fair), I teamed up with Stay22 to create the aforementioned practical, one-stop shop for making affiliate disclosures easy:
The Stress-Free Legal Starter Kit for Affiliate Disclosures is free, straightforward, and built for people who’d rather not spend their afternoon trying to decode consumer protection laws.
👉 Download it now, keep it handy, and use it as a reference whenever you're publishing affiliate content.
About the Author:
Meredith Shippee, J.D. has been a licensed attorney for 15 years, spent 12 of them earning her burnout badge in BigLaw, and is now a significantly happier human after founding The Blog Law Guide, a one-stop-shop for legal tips, resources, and ready-to-use legal templates made specifically for bloggers. From breaking down affiliate disclosure rules to making sense of privacy policies and copyright law, she helps bloggers protect their work without losing their sanity.
When she’s not translating legalese into something humans can actually understand, Meredith runs Globe Trot Gal, a solo travel blog fueled by her European travel addiction and her unwillingness to wait around for someone else to pack a bag. She also may or may not have a questionable habit of reading privacy laws for fun (and yes, she realizes how weird that sounds).